Ruthlessness in public life

Abstract

The article investigates the justice of preferential policies, such as those granting a preference to black people or women over white men in admission to schools and in appointments to jobs, when the white men are otherwise better qualified. It is argued that preferential policies are not required by justice, but they are also not unjust. The reason is that the system from which such policies depart is already unjust for reasons that have nothing to do with racial or sexual discrimination. – AI-generated abstract.